Making Time

Why do we find time for the things that we find time for? That sounds a little longwinded and confusing. Why do I make time each afternoon to study German and Thai and write my blog and study food and do a little exercise (as yet not enough) but I don't find or is it make time to wash the car or tidy the house. Why? I don't know. 

Have you ever heard the saying that if we didn't have deadlines we wouldn't get anything done. I oven wonder at work why my intensity increases only as the deadline for lunch service approaches. Don't get me wrong I have gotten into work some days and tried to run like a crazy man to get things done as quickly as I can, but too often I burn out at some point of the day and much like a long distance runner who goes out too hard I hit the wall at some point (usually when the deadline has passed) and progress grinds almost to a halt. So basically I charge happily with awesome intensity through the morning only to hit the wall at clean up time and then struggle to the finish. Surely if there was any logic to life I should find the energy at the end of the day because the motivation at that point is an earlier departure and with the heading home my time becomes mine. And surely what most if not all of us are striving for is the opportunity to have more time to do as we wish. 

Why do I sleep in on the weekend when time is mine but set an alarm an get out of bed on work days? Surely I should be setting alarms on the weekend because there the day is mine to spend on me and for me. But alas the modern world for all its sophistication and talk of work/life balance this is not the case. Not even close. I started typing this 2 days ago and in truth didn't really have a plan, but thought if I just start typing it will come to me. Start it off and see where it takes you. 

In the 1800's people worked over 60 hours a week, they also slept or at least were in bed whilst it was dark. So take tomorrow. The sun will rise at 6.12am and set at 7.10pm. That is about 11hours of darkness. Prior to the advent of electricity that meant that most people would have been asleep or at least in bed for 11 hours of the day. 7 x 11 is 77 plus the 60 to 70 hours of work. Lets make that 65 hours. That leaves a mere 26 hours in the week for yourself. Less than 4 hours a day. Are we better off today? Short answer yes. How much better? Most of us claim the 6 to 8 hours sleep a night. 49 hours on average plus working 38 hours. That's 87 hours, giving free hours to do as we please (some of that spent in transit) of 81 hours a week. How are we using those hours? Maybe for some, during Covid they have spent more time around the house getting some projects done. Maybe in normal times nights out with friends and family or just a just a dinner for 2 at a local restaurant. For everyone it is different. How much time is 81 hours a week? That's over 11 hours a day on average even if we do an extra hour at work Monday to Thursday. As I type that I realise that your lunch break at work is not included there either. 

That thought set off a mental alert too. That half hour for lunch is still ours to do with at least to some extent as we please. How best to utilise it? If my workmates over the past few years are anything to go on it will be spent staring at a mobile phone whilst eating lunch. Now that mobile phone connects to the world via the internet as we know so we could do any number of things with it. Most likely though we scroll through social media feeds and if asked what we looked up we will be unable to recall within an hour or more. Why don't we use that time to read or do some language study through an app or meditate for 15 minutes? It doesn't have to be dead time. 

I guess my point is that it is your time to use as you please. I am a fan of audiobooks and podcasts which I listen to whilst in transit. Yes I consider this to be a reasonable way to spend my hour and a half daily commute but by getting the right podcasts on I could be using the time more wisely. I could be using it to be better informed. Having said that we aren't robots and do need some downtime every day. 

I guess the point I am making is that we do have a fair amount of time for ourselves and need to be better at making good use of that time. Balance is important though and no one can work 17 hour days, at least not for an extended period of time. Are we working to live or living to work? The choice is yours to make. Let me just finish off with a quote I heard some years back whilst listening to the Tim Ferris Show and his interview with Wim Hof. Wim has some wild ideas on icebaths and the like. The memorable quote was "easy choices, hard life or hard choices, easy life". Feel free to let that one roll around in your head for a while. It's time I put a fork in this one because it is done. Happy living people!!

Flying under the radar

I sometimes think that my simple lifestyle affords me some kind of immunity from the world around me. So far at least, the effects of a global pandemic which has impacted many millions of people around the world has in some way passed me by. Yes, over the last few months whilst waiting to find out if I still had a job it caused me stress and my wife was without work for 6 months and stressed out by the possibility of catching the virus which could have had serious ramifications due to her lower than normal immunity due to having her spleen removed a few years back, but the actual impact has been more mental than actually impactful. Sure we have eaten out less and maybe tightened our spending a little, but really I am actually in a better financial position now than I was this time last year, or at least will be if things work out with my new employer and my old employer comes good with my redundancy pay-out over the next couple of weeks. 

What do I put this relatively unscathed yea
r down to? It’s quite simple. Low expectations. If you aren’t biting off a giant piece of the pie you don’t have as much to drop down the front of your shirt. Life is always going to knock you down and if you’re standing at the top of Sydney’s Centrepoint Tower then you have a long way to fall and just as far to pick yourself back up again. However, if you are just plodding along above the water level then it’s not so hard to get back there or even climb a few rungs on the ladder. 

As I said above I am hoping my old employer, as of last Wednesday, comes through with my redundancy payment then I’ll be sitting pretty for a few home improvements and maybe an upgrade on the old car too. To be truthful, whilst many are struggling I feel like I’ve had a small win. That win eases some financial pressure in the short term and hopefully with a large chunk of commitment from me I hope that in six months time I’ll be breaking free of the rat race to launch my own small food based business. Sure it won’t be easy but if I can pull it off I’ll be setting myself on a path to a better life than ever before.

Most people working in hospitality would say that the life of being free from location is impossible for a person working in an industry where the customer is right there in front of you. I am hoping to utilise the internet and the socials to generate income. How? Well, initially I want to commit myself to 30 minutes of blogging a day and see what comes of it. As well as that I want to start a vlog. I love the youtubers who take deep dives on particular foods or restaurants. Maybe I can do the food review thing, or try to make the best ever homemade pizza or make brie cheese at home. Go deep food nerd and see where I come up for air. 

Podcasting also has a strong pull. It's another thing you can do from anywhere. What do you I talk about? How often should I do an episode? Special guests, where do I find them and so many more questions need to be answered. I guess some serious brainstorming and then a trial run or pilot episode. Can you do more than 1 pilot episode for a series? If I am making the rules maybe I can do a few pilots before official kick off. The Sporkful Podcast is one of my current favourites. Dan Pashman, the host started it in his home and now pays the bills with his income from podcasting. At least that is what I heard. That is the dream.

So we have blogging and vlogging and podcasting. And, have you heard of drop shipping? That buy and sell thing where you buy a product cheaply from, usually China and sell it in another online market for a profit. I like the idea of creating a small food equipment business. The goal isn't to get rich but to find products I think would be useful to me, test them out myself and then if of good enough quality sell them in my little online store. 

Once I have written up enough recipes and the like I could possibly think of writing a cookbook too. That however is a long way off. There is however one other element to the business and that would be manufacturing, on a small scale, products such as peanut and mixed nut butters as well as preserved chilli sauces and so much more. I have currently got my first apple cider and raisin vinegar batches on the go and am keen to make a really high quality product that can also bring an income. 

Life theory number 8,000,007. When you ever seek advice on investing you are almost always told to diversify your investments. The reason being that if you put all your eggs in the one basket then if it goes pear shaped you lose all you investing capital. If however you diversify, that is, invest in a number of areas and one goes badly, hopefully some of the others will be able to support the weak investment. Have you noticed in life how most of us humans gain almost all of their income from one job? So, as we have seen over the last 9 months in particular if you lose that job then you will have no fall-back to support you in your time of need. There is in most peoples cases no spreading of income that can make up for the loss of your job. This is something I would love to overcome. 

My first cooks job was with a fantastic chef who ran a bits and pieces food business with a number of small income sources which together made the business tick the financial boxes. I would say that most of the pieces weren't enough on their own to support the business outright, but in combination with the other elements formed an important part of the business. There was also the possibility of putting more energy into particular elements of the business if extra income was needed or even because the owner simply enjoyed working in that particular part of the business. 

Anyway I thing I have waffled on here quite long enough and have hopefully made some sense at least at times. Time to leave this here and continue to chase the dream!!